w-panes, one saw at almost every other house,
the words, "_Ici on loge la nuit_." At the end of this thoroughfare our
unconscious guide plunged into a still darker and fouler _impasse_, hung
across from side to side with rows of dingy linen, and ornamented in the
centre with a mound of decaying cabbage-leaves, potato-parings,
oyster-shells, and the like. Here he made for a large tumble-down house
that closed the alley at the farther end, and, still followed by
ourselves, went in at an open doorway, and up a public staircase dimly
lighted by a flickering oil-lamp at every landing. At his own door he
paused, and just as he had turned the key, Mueller accosted him.

"Is that you, Guichet?" he said. "Why, you are the very man I want! If I
had come ten minutes sooner, I should have missed you."

"Is it M'sieur Mueller?" said Guichet, bending his heavy brows and
staring at us in the gloom of the landing.

"Ay, and with me the friend you saw the other day. So, this is your den?
May we come in?"

He had been standing till now with his hand on the key and the closed
door at his back, evidently not intending to admit us; but thus asked,
he pushed the door open, and said, somewhat ungraciously:--

"It is just that, M'sieur Mueller--a den; not fit for gentlemen like you.
But you can go in, if you please."

We did not wait for a second invitation, but went in immediately. It was
a long, low, dark room, with a pale gleam of fading daylight struggling
in through a tiny window at the farther end. We could see nothing at
first but this gleam; and it was not till Guichet had raked out the wood
ashes on the hearth, and blown them into a red glow with his breath,
that we could distinguish the form or position of anything in the room.
Then, by the flicker of the fire, we saw a low truckle-bed close under
the window; a kind of bruised and battered seaman's chest in the middle
of the room; a heap of firewood in one corner; a pile of old
packing-cases; old sail-cloth, old iron, and all kinds of rubbish in
another; a few pots and pans over the fire-place; and a dilapidated
stool or two standing about the room. Avoiding these latter, we set
ourselves down upon the edge of the chest; while Guichet, having by this
time lit a piece of candle-end in a tin sconce against the wall, stood
before us with folded arms, and stared at us in silence.

"I want to know, Guichet, if you can give me some sittings," said
Mueller, by way of opening the conv